Juras­sic Park – win­ter 2009

Af­ter a num­ber of years fish­ing fairly busy dayt­icket and club wa­ters, I re­ally was in need of some peace and quiet, and quite un­ex­pect­edly that chance arose. Brian Skoyles had re­galed me with tales about a lovely syn­di­cate wa­ter, miles from civ­i­liza­tion, but with a tiny mem­ber­ship – it truly was dead man’s shoes at the time. How­ever a mem­ber was drop­ping out in 2010 and my name was up for con­sid­er­a­tion should I wish to join, once I’d vis­ited it and felt able to fit in with its ethos. It was early De­cem­ber be­fore I could see Brian, and I lined up a day trip to see what I thought of the place. Li­ais­ing at Hum­ber­side Air­port, I fol­lowed him through some won­der­ful coun­try­side to what he aptly de­scribed as the mid­dle of nowhere. Through a pad­locked gate and then down a slope that wouldn’t be amiss on a Black­pool big dip­per, we ar­rived, slith­er­ing into a car park (if a fence fac­ing a field could be de­scribed as that). We left the gear in the car and de­cided to have a walk round first.

Sit­u­ated in a val­ley and around three acres in size, it in­stantly re­minded me of the leg­endary Red­mire Pool. With is­lands, points and trees it was a never end­ing voy­age of sur­prises as we walked round. Heck, it even had a mag­nif­i­cent syn­di­cate hut and ac­com­pa­ny­ing thun­der box. What a place – now let’s get the rods out.

Ac­cord­ing to Brian at that time of year, bite time was late af­ter­noon, so there re­ally was no rush to get them out in a hurry. We both de­cided to fish on the field bank and play it by ear as the day went on. I de­cided to fish as close as pos­si­ble to the dam end and af­ter a few ex­ploratory casts, the clipped up rods were soon in po­si­tion tight to the far bank. Look­ing back, per­haps I should have fished on the far bank and dropped them in the edge. Al­though the day was cold and damp, the sur­round­ings more than made up for it and two fish top­ping over our baits in late af­ter­noon had the pulse rate go­ing sky high. At last knock­ings, Brian was away. I did the hon­ours with the cam­era. A stun­ning up­per dou­ble com­mon in its win­ter colours and any doubts I had about the place were erased... count me in Nick!

Post­script: Of course I joined the syn­di­cate and, for a num­ber of years, en­joyed some fan­tas­tic fish­ing. I nick­named the place Juras­sic Park as it truly felt like some­where so far re­moved from civ­i­liza­tion. The di­nosaurs were op­tional. Sadly its lo­ca­tion next to a stream was al­ways go­ing to be a prob­lem and de­spite at­tempts to pro­tect it, the ot­ters had a field day. For me it was heart­break­ing and I had to leave in or­der to pro­tect the good mem­o­ries I had of the place. Luck­ily, lo­cal leg­end Jim Wil­son, has taken over run­ning the place, fenced it and, hope­fully, one day it will rise again.

Sit­u­ated in a val­ley and around three acres in size, it in­stantly re­minded me of the leg­endary Red­mire Pool. With is­lands, points and trees it was a never end­ing voy­age of sur­prises